CFUUID Reference

CFUUID objects are used by plug-ins to uniquely identify types, interfaces, and factories. When creating a new type, host developers must generate UUIDs to identify the type as well as its interfaces and factories.

UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers), also known as GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) or IIDs (Interface Identifiers), are 128-bit values designed to be unique.

The standard format for UUIDs represented in ASCII is a string punctuated by hyphens, for example 68753A44-4D6F-1226-9C60-0050E4C00067. The hex representation looks, as you might expect, like a list of numerical values preceded by 0x. For example, 0x68, 0x75, 0x3A, 0x44, 0x4D, 0x6F, 0x12, 0x26, 0x9C, 0x60, 0x00, 0x50, 0xE4, 0xC0, 0x00, 0x67 . To use a UUID, you create it and then copy the resulting strings into your header and C language source files. Because a UUID is expressed as an array of bytes, there are no endianness considerations for different platforms.

You can create a CFUUID object using any one of the CFUUIDCreate... functions. Use the CFUUIDGetConstantUUIDWithBytes function if you want to declare a UUID constant in a #define statement. You can get the raw bytes of an existing CFUUID object using the CFUUIDGetUUIDBytes function.